What are the best hotel booking sites?

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#3337464 30-Jan-2025 16:55

Can't remember which site - but perhaps booking.com, I seem to recall seeing prices listed for the date I entered, but when I click through to the deal it is much higher...

freitasm

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#3337513 30-Jan-2025 17:00

I tend to book directly, but I've used booking.com a couple of times.

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#3337522 30-Jan-2025 18:03

I must admit, I tend to book direct if I can

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#3337580 31-Jan-2025 07:56

I've used Hotels.com many times with success. Whether you pay upfront or at the hotel is actually up to the hotel -- some demand upfront payment some are happy for you to reserve and pay later -- nothing to do with the booking sites really as it varies by hotel. Hotels.com also (depending on hotel) offer options e.g. refundable/non-refundable, pay now/pay later, breakfast/no breakfast, etc. More recently however I've started using Hotels.com (and other similar sites) to research and then book direct -- some of the hotels I have stayed in have posters/flyers/etc encouraging people to book direct prompting me to look into that. For some brands e.g. Accor this gets you a better price and also Accor/Qantas points as well which is a nice incentive to book directly. However if I ever find there is no advantage going direct I may just stick with Hotels.com.

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#3337585 31-Jan-2025 08:10

A contemporary example: I booked last night for a night in Taupo - 10% cheaper on Hotels.com than on the motel's website. The booking also contributes a 'rewards night'; collect 10 of these and get an average of the 10 towards a future booking.

I don't get sucked in by this rewards scheme, and only book when it's a good deal, but it's still a worthwhile perk over the longer term.

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#3337586 31-Jan-2025 08:25

jonathan18:

A contemporary example:

Unrelated, but I enjoyed the way you phrased this :)

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#3337590 31-Jan-2025 08:42

Just got back from 5 weeks in Japan and Korea, I Used Agoda for all my bookings. I usually like booking direct, but Agoda (and I believe most other booking sites) has free cancellation. I changed my mind a few times about where I wanted to go and when, and that wouldn't have been possible if I'd booked directly. Plus, Agoda works with cashback sites like Shopback, which can save a bit more depending on when you make the booking.

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#3337639 31-Jan-2025 11:16

I just booked a hotel room in wellington this morning. Used Trivago to find hotels. Trivago pushed me to Booking.com where I have made quite a few bookings. Checked on the hotel website but got a better deal on Booking.com by $40/night as i get a discount due to the number of bookings ive made.

Sometimes direct is best sometimes not.

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#3337710 31-Jan-2025 14:01

jonathan18:

A contemporary example: I booked last night for a night in Taupo - 10% cheaper on Hotels.com than on the motel's website.

The prices listed on a motel's website are just their advertised prices. They're 100% negotiable, especially if you contact the motel and tell them that you're thinking of booking via an OTA but you'll book direct if they can beat the price. See it from the point of the motel: they look at their booking system and see that for the night(s) you're interested in they have x number of free rooms. They can offer you a room for a bit off the usual rate and get that income, or they can stick to their advertised prices and hope that someone else will come along and pay what they're asking. If rooms are sitting empty then they're making no income, much better to lose a little bit and earn something.

Of course there are always exceptions. If there's something on in town (eg a concert) then they'll hope that they'll fill all their rooms easily and so there's no need to discount. Also some of the larger hotels have deals with the OTAs where they promise not to sell at a cheaper rate and in return they pay a smaller commission.

Another reason that you might see higher tariffs on an accommodation providers' own site compared to Booking.com is because booking.com has a parity clause. This is a requirement that accommodation providers aren't allowed to advertise a cheaper price than what is shown on Booking.com. I believe they did this worldwide and slowly various countries have been ruling that it's illegal. Australia were one of the first to outlaw this. NZ followed quickly after. I see that the EU have also cracked down on it recently.

And if you think that there's lots of OTA options so competition must be fierce and therefore the prices good, think again. Booking.com is owned by Booking Holdings, which also owns Priceline.com, Agoda, Kayak, Cheapflights and Rentalcars.com. Expedia is owned by Expedia Group, which also owns Hotels.com, Trivago, Travelocity, Hotwire.com, Vrbo, Orbitz, Ebookers and Wotif (amongst others). TripAdvisor owns a bunch of similar companies.

And speaking of TripAdvisor, you've probably seen those signs that accommodation providers love to put up on their front door, on signs and in their advertising, eg:

TripAdvisor Recommends Glenorchy Alpine Suites

These things aren't worth the paper (or pixels) they're painted on. Pretty much every single site on TripAdvisor gets these "awards". The poor deluded motel owners think they must be special to receive these "awards", TripAdvisor makes a big deal about them in the email they send to the motel owner telling them that they've "won" this "award". What they don't say is that every other motel has also "won" the same "award". They encourage the motel owner to add it to their website (they provide HTML code that displays the "award" and which also links back to TripAdvisor's own site, thus getting millions of back-links to their site). And of course they offer to sell the motel owner signs that they can put up to announce to the world how special they are. Other OTAs also offer these useless "awards" to pretty much all their client properties.

In case you're wondering how I know all this, I've worked in this industry for the last 10 years. Over that time I've built hundreds of websites for accommodation providers (motels, B&B's, holiday parks, camping grounds, hotels, etc). I've spoken to many of the people that own these establishments and they're pretty unanimous in their opinions of the OTAs which virtually came out of nowhere and inserted themselves between the accommodation providers and their clients, clipping the ticket on every booking that goes through them (I've often wondered if there are other industries ripe for this sort of exploitation?).

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#3337781 31-Jan-2025 15:55

MurrayM:

The prices listed on a motel's website are just their advertised prices. They're 100% negotiable, especially if you contact the motel and tell them that you're thinking of booking via an OTA but you'll book direct if they can beat the price.

Thanks, that's a really useful and interesting post. I had pretty much assumed that's how it was operating in the back end. Yep, I'm aware that if I call each and every hotel I'm interested in booking I may get a better deal than what's on one of these 'middlemen' sites, but that takes additional time and hassle, and the outcome is far from guaranteed. I also like to book well in advance to have trips nailed down - I imagine providers are going to be far less keen on offering a good deal in such circumstances.

There is definitely a huge convenience factor, from my perspective, in using these sites. Obviously, there's the time saved (no phone calls or waiting for messages to be returned); then there's the benefit that accommodation bookings for a trip are all on one site (or a small number of sites), as opposed to a different one for each location; I also can enjoy a consistent (though not great) UX in finding accommodation and making bookings, as opposed to the very 'variable' quality of many accommodation providers' websites (I'm sure none are yours, but I am astounded at how many are poor quality - even from the larger providers)...

Sure, I know this doesn't take away from your valid points, and continuing to use these sites is much like ordering from Temu despite having some idea of what's behind the curtain (though I've fully broken that habit now!) - but as highlighted above, from this particular consumer's point of view there are clear advantages.

KiwiSurfer

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#3337827 31-Jan-2025 17:27

MurrayM:

I've spoken to many of the people that own these establishments and they're pretty unanimous in their opinions of the OTAs which virtually came out of nowhere and inserted themselves between the accommodation providers and their clients, clipping the ticket on every booking that goes through them (I've often wondered if there are other industries ripe for this sort of exploitation?).

My emphasis added to above quote.

A different perspective: They haven't really virtually come out of nowhere. They've just taken over the role of the high street travel agency -- in the old pre-internet days it was much of the same tricks but different people. At least with websites, email and cheap international calls it is more likely people will book directly. In the old pre-internet days people would most likely have booked travel, accommodation, etc through their local travel agency to save the hassle of dealing with lots of different providers. In those days travel agencies clipped pretty much every ticket with commissions from everyone--airlines, transfers, hotels, attractions, etc--they're the reason travel providers (e.g. airlines, train companies, etc) were very quick to adapt to direct internet sales. Accommodation providers for some reason haven't really had as much success as airlines have had with direct internet sales -- hence they still rely on travel agencies (whether OTA or offline) more than travel providers.

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#3337941 1-Feb-2025 01:55

jonathan18:

MurrayM:

The prices listed on a motel's website are just their advertised prices. They're 100% negotiable, especially if you contact the motel and tell them that you're thinking of booking via an OTA but you'll book direct if they can beat the price.

Thanks, that's a really useful and interesting post. I had pretty much assumed that's how it was operating in the back end. Yep, I'm aware that if I call each and every hotel I'm interested in booking I may get a better deal than what's on one of these 'middlemen' sites, but that takes additional time and hassle, and the outcome is far from guaranteed. I also like to book well in advance to have trips nailed down - I imagine providers are going to be far less keen on offering a good deal in such circumstances.

There is definitely a huge convenience factor, from my perspective, in using these sites. Obviously, there's the time saved (no phone calls or waiting for messages to be returned); then there's the benefit that accommodation bookings for a trip are all on one site (or a small number of sites), as opposed to a different one for each location; I also can enjoy a consistent (though not great) UX in finding accommodation and making bookings, as opposed to the very 'variable' quality of many accommodation providers' websites (I'm sure none are yours, but I am astounded at how many are poor quality - even from the larger providers)...

Sure, I know this doesn't take away from your valid points, and continuing to use these sites is much like ordering from Temu despite having some idea of what's behind the curtain (though I've fully broken that habit now!) - but as highlighted above, from this particular consumer's point of view there are clear advantages.

I'm much the same. I travel for leisure a fair bit, 3-5 weeks a year. I'm not going to go through the rigmarole of contacting every accommodation provider directly to save $10 a night. The aggregators offer me significant value in being able to compare locations, rates and conditions. If the providers website doesn't offer me an advantage I probably won't bother with it.

Handle9

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#3337943 1-Feb-2025 02:04

MurrayM:

I've spoken to many of the people that own these establishments and they're pretty unanimous in their opinions of the OTAs which virtually came out of nowhere and inserted themselves between the accommodation providers and their clients, clipping the ticket on every booking that goes through them (I've often wondered if there are other industries ripe for this sort of exploitation?).

The accommodation providers did it to themselves.They treated customers like idiots for years. Rack rate is just one example.

They use dynamic pricing and have purposely created a large number of products that make it very difficult for consumers to compare offerings from different providers. Being able to put a rate, number of rooms and addons (breakfast, half board etc) into an aggregator and then sort by whatever criteria a consumer wants has real value.

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#3338097 1-Feb-2025 17:24

Traveling the best thing to do when you have time to travel and have to be very nice to do with someone

jonathan18

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#3338136 1-Feb-2025 20:25

Angel177:

Traveling the best thing to do when you have time to travel and have to be very nice to do with someone

Wha?! @freitasm, seems a somewhat weird post for a first effort!

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